"Some bad blood between Linus Torvalds and GNOME developers is flaring up again. Previously, Torvalds has said that Linux users should switch to KDE instead of GNOME because of the GNOME team's 'users are idiots' mentality. Now he has 'put his money where his mouth is' by submitting patches to GNOME in order to have it behave as he likes. This week, on the Linux Foundation's (formerly OSDL) Desktop Architects mailing list, the two sides are going mano a mano." Can I interest you in a pair of these and these?

"Managed to get myself embroiled in a little email exchange with Linus about configurability options and GNOME. Seesm that little exchange even managed to hit Slashdot. The misconception that I feel Linus have and a lot of the people posting on Slashdot is that patches that adds configuration options to GNOME would automatically get rejected. This is simply false.
At best this is an extrapolation of the quite strict policy of Metacity in particular and the general GNOME policy of 'no GUI options before thinking'. This policy did come into effect with GNOME 2.x and it came about both due to UI design usability discussions, but also as a result of seeing our config menu's get clogged with options which mostly where there due to bugs, missing features and a heterogen deployment environment below GNOME. It was decided to focus on actually trying to solve these lower level issues instead of offering config options to work around them. A talk by Jim Getty's at GUADEC called 'Draining the swamp' being considered the call to arms on that issue. Projects such as HAL, the rejuvenated X.org effort and many other freedesktop projects came about almost as a direct consequence of this.

There was also some misconceptions on the Sawfish to Metacity switch that happened in this time period. It is not correct to say that Sawfish got replaced by Metacity due to it being deciding its high degree of configurability was bad, far from it. Sure there where people who felt Sawfish went a bit overboard in that regard, but that was not the reason it got ditched as the default GNOME window manager. The reason for that was simply that after Eazel went backrupt and Sawfish maintainer John Harper had to find a new job, he ended up at Apple. And thus due to Apple corporate policy, and probably long hours at work, he couldn't maintain Sawfish anymore. The troublesome thing about Sawfish was that it was written in its own Lisp dialect so as part of Sawfish you got both an extra lisp interpreter and GTK+ bindings for it. This meant that the C/C++ skills in the GNOME community didn't lend themselves well to fixing bugs in Sawfish. The two libraries and Sawsfish itself thus went unmaintained as John went away and nobody where interested/felt qualified to take it over. Thus the GNOME developers had to look around for a new window manager and it was decided that one should aim for one written in C like the rest of the desktop libraries to lessen the chance of future maintenance prolems. To answer this call Havoc Pennington stepped up with Metacity and it was quickly adopted by a lot of GNOME developers and users and subsequently chosen as the standard.

Metacity was philosophically very different from Sawfish and Havoc was very strict about what he let into Metacity, due to an idea that requests for config options was usually a result of broken behaviour in the window manager and thus feeling the behaviour should be fixed instead of a config option added to work around the problem. This was in line with the policy that do govern GNOME as mentioned above, but in the case of Metacity this was applied in a much sterner/hardcore fashion that for most other modules. But due to Havoc's high profile in the community and beyond it I think the policy he kept for metacity colored how people outside the project perceivedthe project as a whole which is the main reason I see for this hard killed perception to live on.

Anyway, back to Linus and his irritation with Metacity. I can't not say if his patches will go in or not, its not my call. But I did at least add them properly to bugzilla for Linus to ensure they get reviewed and commented on at least."

The Gnome HIG is definitely a great thing. And they (the devs) deserve all possible credit for that work. It's great and is what makes Gnome so great.

Just too bad that Gnome HIG compliance is secured by removing (access to) functionality rather than ordering the options logically. But the Gnome HIG is not responsible for that, and the Gnome HIG is not the problem.

I really like the reduced configurability (not functionality) of Gnome. In 99% of all cases, the configurability is reduced in such a way that *I* have everything I really need. For example, when burning a CD, I simply drag the files I want into Nautilus, press the burn button, enter a name for the CD and that was it. No configuring of Joliet, Rock Ridge, multiple sessions or file name truncating options - it just burns the CD in a way that it works in every computer on this planet, and that's what I need in 99% of all cases. In this 1% I need more, I simply do a quick apt-get install gnome-baker or whatever and I'm happy again.

Fair enough if you like KDE, but I'm a developer and I use GNOME because I like the interface. I don't think it treats me like I'm an idiot, but rather treats me like I don't want to configure much and I'd prefer it just worked without changing any settings.

I don't have time to change all my settings and I like OS X for the same reason. Linus: If you like KDE, use KDE but don't claim that using GNOME is a bad thing. Maybe the reason GNOME isn't applying your patches or doing what you want is because they feel it's not important, other things are more important, or it's against their design philosophies.

I think they tend to be anti-new features because either:
- Most users won't use it
- It's visually overcomplicated (note this isn't saying that users are idiots, but rather that the human brain or some human brains doesn't cope so well with hundreds of elements and text onscreen)
- It is bad design
- Need to get it checked by usability testing or a debate on the mailing lists about whether it is a good feature
- New features = new bugs

If you have issues with the way GNOME does things... fork it or use KDE. At least try and convince GNOME to change their mind through mailing lists and such. Don't assume that because you don't like it, you are right and everyone should stop using it.

I don't want to configure much and I'd prefer it just worked without changing any settings

I'm saying this with no offensive intent, please try to take it as being so. What I feel fairly frequently, when people start to talk about configurability and customisability differences between Gnome and KDE, that the people who say I-don't-want-to-spend- my-life-configuring-things have to come from some other planet, or maybe from another galaxy.

What I mean by this is that why on earth should anyone spend any amount of time configuring his x desktop, apart from an initial setup and maybe once or twice a year when personal preferences might change considerably for a reason. Do these people install linuxes so often that this becomes an issue ? Then, if they install so much, why do they say they don't have time to spend on configuring the desktop ? Or they don't know how to save their settings ?

All in all, my opinion is, that after some time spent for customizing one's desktop (Gnome or KDE or whatever else), the later relatively minor configuration changes should be easy to do and giving as much free hand in doing so as humanly possible. Considering this, I always found KDE more easy to manage and always becoming easier, while when doing similar minor changes in Gnome often resulted in hairs being pulled out, faces getting deep scratches and mothers' being mentioned in not so polite contexts.

What I've always wanted to have in Gnome is a master switch to change into some uber user mode where I'd have the flexibility and modularity of kde behaving like gnome. Yeah, tell me about bad dreams

You have a point, but even if your desktop is only configured once, the remnants of the configuration tools lie all over the place and there are more preferences windows to go through when you want to change something small. Ever see the old GAIM preferences window?

Mind you, with GNOME I never changed anything except wallpaper and the panel applets, but with KDE i spent an awful lot of my time changing things. I don't even know why, maybe it was because I could, or because GNOME's defaults and behaviour is more 'sane' for me.

The issue doesn't always lie with configuration; it's more a general design problem. Do you include a feature that's used by infrequently by only 1/1000th of the users? Particularly when it's unimportant or the other way requires a second click or a command at the terminal.

But even so, you do config things a lot more than just once, there is usually more than one computer involved in your life. I have my laptop, my desktop, girlfriend's computer, work computer, school computer.

Corporate computers sometimes have default settings and no config options, and if the defaults of a particular system aren't sane, you cannot change them. I really think that even if you are going to allow lots of configurable, more focus should be put into the defaults and most used configuration settings. In GNOME you can use the gconf-editor or terminal to change a lot of lesser used settings which didn't deserve a place in the UI for whatever reason.

OS X doesn't have any action for double clicking the title bar here... and I got used to that.. well really i just stopped maximizing windows since I found it wasn't really all that useful. I think that the design philosophies tend to believe that if the system is good enough 'configuration' won't be necessary. Only things like desktop preferences, wallpaper, screensaver, etc.

Well, configurability is a double enged sword.
It gives more ways to fix things but it also makes it much easier to break stuff. Options rarely are completly otrthogonal and increasing their number increases the number of their broken combinations exponentially and thus makes getting the usefull one more complex.
It's not only about visual clutter but also about polluting the functionall face of an application with technicall concepts that aren't really relevant to getting your work done.
The more options are there that you don't understand the longer the user would crawl in darkness, distracted from his/hers primary focus. Sometimes it's even worth bending over some app's limitation, especially when it was introduced by a usability savvy designer.
Worst, configurability gives devs a convenient excuse for not fixing architectural flaws, giving alternative between broken with this or broken with that.
Look how radical and disrupting the turn towards hal have been. And what for? Just to free user from modyfyying one damn line in /etc/fstab. If you'd do a survey back then before all of this was implemented most dev's whould say the effort was not worth the perceived benefit. The fact that is was initiated by Gnome people and deployed there much quicker that inside KDE tells a thing or two.

"Do these people install linuxes so often that this becomes an issue ?"

Surely, there are some who think that if something does not work (meaning, they don't know how to make it work), the whole system has to be reinstalled. Or maybe they got spoiled by the concept of reinstalling the OS all three months which is very popular with some MICROS~1 products, at least here in Germany. :-)

"Or they don't know how to save their settings ?"

Same here: It's possible! My uncle uses KDE for a week now. He created a user, configured everything, then he wanted to change the user name, so he deleted user "foo" and created a new user "bar". Can you imagine how surprised he was when all his settings were gone? "How can I undo this?" he asked panically... sorry I could not help him. This leads me to a question: Has KDM a function to rename a user (should affect /etc/passwd and /etc/group)?

"Considering this, I always found KDE more easy to manage and always becoming easier, while when doing similar minor changes in Gnome often resulted in hairs being pulled out, faces getting deep scratches and mothers' being mentioned in not so polite contexts."

While I personally had the need to change the look & feel of KDE (colors, window decorations, mouse focus etc.), which was very easy using the KDE control center, I did not notice the tendency to do this in GNOME. I like the concept of manually maintainable configuration files (text files) in GNOME which allows me to do remote changes with only a SSH session available, but I have to admit that I like the KDE control center because it makes configuration very easy. The content is structured well so you can find very quickly the aspects you want to change. But I'm not sure I could to this via CLI.

"What I've always wanted to have in Gnome is a master switch to change into some uber user mode where I'd have the flexibility and modularity of kde behaving like gnome. Yeah, tell me about bad dreams "

Why don't the advanced user people just use gconf to configure the interface?
I think it would be a nightmare to have every configuration dialog have a simple and advanced mode that is displayed on checking a setting in gconf. It would be better to just have the settings in gconf -- most are there anyway.

Nooo.. GConf is a disaster. Even many ordinary settings are there, and many advanced settings are not.

GConf is anything but userfriendly. GConf if horrible and unintuitive and very non-Gnome.

The major problem here is that some people think that adding in a few extra options automatically means that all options must be in the same dialogue window.

I just ask: Ever heard of tabbed pages? Ever heard of a button called "More options..."? Ever heard about decentralized and centralized Action Editors? Ever heard of a Menu Editor (took forever to get that one back) ?

Some people think that a simple easy-to-use interface can ONLY be created by removing options.

That is incorrect!

A simple easy-to-use interface is be created by thoughtful placement of widgets, logical placement of options and not too few, nor too many options in one window/tabbed page.

When adding a feature/option or an application there is only ONE valid question: Will this make the system easier to use? If yes, add it! If no, don't add it.

A centralized File Action Editor alongside the existing cumbersome and decentralized File Action Editor would make the system easier - so it should be added.

A Menu Editor would make the system easier - and it was added (officially with Gnome 2.16).

Good point. I think I have become so used to playing with the MS registry that I thought it would be a good idea. I forgot how much I have hated the registry, and how bad an idea I used to think gconf would be.
Which reminds me of why hated KDE: clutter & and unthoughtful layout. Gnome does not have that -- at least on the surface.

I can agree on MS Registry being bad, and KDE apps to tend towards the horribly cluttered. I have however seen some GTK+-applications being equally cluttered, but most Gnome-oriented GTK+-applications are wonderfully clean and well-structured.

Unless his comments are being taken out of context I don't understand why he's continually placing so much energy flaming Gnome developers. I started off with KDE and eventually switched over to Gnome for at least one good reason and that is simplistic design which is user friendly. Over time KDE seemed to get more bloated with unnecessary configuration options which most end users especially in a work environment would not need. For Linux distributions to have a larger market share there needs to be a design model which realizes most consumers are not Geeks that want to spend hours tweaking their systems. If Gnome wasn't a viable solution then why would most businesses running medium to large Enterprises choose Gnome over KDE? Maybe Linus's attitude is due to KDE losing more support each year from distribution developers such as Novell, Red Hat, etc. Anyway, while I respect his contributions to the Linux community for an individual who helped start the Linux movement which is in part about freedom of choice he shouldn't be taking sides.

The problem is removal of functionality in order to get a simple design, rather than designing a logical ordered design.

It's not logical that Average Joe can switch between ESD, ALSA and OSS in Sound Preferences, but have to use GConf in order to switch on wireframes for windows (even hidden as a variable with a very weird name).

The problem with the options in KDE is not the many options, but the cluttered design. The GUI layout is horrible in KDE's Control Center - and that's the problem. And not the configuration options.

I've been a GNOME user for the past 3-4 years (since GNOME 2.6). I chose GNOME for similar reasons, i.e. I like simple and intuitive interfaces. At the time, KDE looked like it was designed and maintained by children. I know this isn't the case, but the results were similar.

This was the time when commercial vendors started getting serious about Linux. They had to make their decisions on desktop environments, and I'm not at all surprised that Red Hat, Ximian (later Novell), and eventually Ubuntu went the GNOME route. The ones that went KDE mostly withered. Mandrake almost went under, SUSE was acquired by a GNOME vendor, Corel is out of the Linux business, and Caldera became SCO.

But I object to your assertion that KDE has gotten more "bloated" over time. As I watch from the sidelines (as a GNOME user), KDE has been getting sleeker and more consistent. GNOME is just about done abandoning its componentized application framework, Bonobo, while KDE's KParts is emerging as the most powerful weapon of integration I've seen since the web browser. Trolltech is doing an amazing job with Qt4, bringing a truly state-of-the-art GUI toolkit to the free software desktop, whereas GTK+2 simply doesn't come close.

The philosophical difference I observe between the GNOME and KDE development communities is that while the GNOME team solves usability problems through simplification, the KDE team does so through innovative technologies. It's no surprise that GNOME's philosophy resulted in a more usable desktop much quicker than did KDE's. But it should also come as no surprise that KDE's philosophy would result in a more usable desktop in the long-run.

It may seem that the dust has settled on the desktop environment landscape. The big players took their sides long ago, picking GNOME. Maybe the pressure from these vendors has taken its toll on the project's ability to innovate? Maybe the realization of being passed-up by the big guys has been a call-to-arms for the KDE project? Regardless, the short-term is over, and the long-run is almost here. The second or third release of KDE4 will leave GNOME in the dust, initiating a new round of DE selection by the big vendors. I don't think it will turn out it GNOME's favor once again.

I take your point, and think it can be pushed a bit. Red Hat was always a Gnome environment, so they didn't jump any ships and change allegiance. Suse still supports KDE, but went towards Gnome in large part because they acquired some Ximian developers; if you're a bakery and you get to hire the chefs that created apple pies, you're going to be baking apple pies before you back turnovers. Ubuntu uses Gnome, but Mark Shuttleworth has stated he uses Kubuntu for development and has put plenty of support behind the project. Corel was never a Linux company, really, and SCO are... problematic swine.

In my own experience, the Proverbial New User has as little trouble with KDE as with Gnome; depending on the distribution, the menu layout can be either intuitive or a mess, no matter what the DE. If the PNU can find the browser, the office software, the graphics software, and maybe the messenger, things work no matter the DE. (Hardware configuration is a different matter all together for the PNU.) And I fail to see how the System Settings is more confusing that GConf. If anything they're on par, but I'd argue that because GConf doesn't feel as if it's part of the overall environment and isn't laid out nearly as logically as the System Settings, from an PNU's standpoint, System Settings wins that one.

I used Gnome for a few years, and for the last year I've stuck primarily with KDE precisely because certain more powerful configurations are at the ready, when I couldn't get to them easily in Gnome. I find Konqueror's ability to ftp directly into remote locations incredibly useful and I use that daily for work. Gnome never handled this as seamlessly and elegantly. And KDE is far faster than Gnome on my machine, but I think that may be a hardware issue. Otherwise I can't explain the split-moment lag I get when I click a menu in Gnome, and the immediate response I get in KDE. On three machines.

KDE4 will be a big test-case scenario, and these debates will all be rehashed again. What's more, the Gnome developers have been called out in the past for not providing any sort of significant developments like KDE4 promises. KDE is also being ported to Windows, which (if it finally happens and works) could introduce scads of people to an open source desktop environment without having to switch operating systems (yet). To my mind, that will be the big test case; if Windows users adopt a FLOS DE for their Windows OS, and if they find it usable and functional and more powerful than Windows, then you may see a significant wave of adoption and PNU's, especially as people have second thoughts about tossing out their two-year-old Vaio for a new Vista system.

His comments on this are almost ever getting taken out of context. The changes he request aren't stuff like "can i get this icon in cornflower blue?" it is always something sensible. See the printer dialog discussion for an example.

"If Gnome wasn't a viable solution then why would most businesses running medium to large Enterprises choose Gnome over KDE?"

Because off license issues. At least that is why it has become the SUN default desktop. LGPL is just very convienient for them.
But noone said that it was unusable as a corporate desktop, you must have dreamed that.

"For Linux distributions to have a larger market share there needs to be a design model which realizes most consumers are not Geeks that want to spend hours tweaking their systems."

So if someone gives you an parachute you are forced to jump from high places? No, obviously not.
And having sensible printing possebilitys doesn't mean you have to use them either.
You can even hide options from incompetent users.

I gave up on Gnome when i had an distribution in which by default the loggoff dialog did not have the option "shutdown". I agree that not every possebility, like different hibernation modes, have to be in there but "turn the dang thing off" is something i just will not accept missing. Instead, you could only get back to GDM and shut down from there.

Sure, i could have spent some time crawling through gconf (which is as good to have as windows registry) trying to fix it, but why would i when KDE is just an apt-get away.

Now, you ask why Linus doesn't just ignores this. But the thing is, people who try Linux will not judge its quality on basis of technologic analysis... they will judge it by "oh, linux doesn't even have basic printer capabilitys... i guess i stick with windows then" and i can see why this disturbs him.

I fully agree with you. I've been a KDE user previously, but switched to Gnome about a year ago. I was simply tired of having to do hours of re-configuring everything until it worked as I liked. This doesn't mean KDE is bad, it did just not behave the way I like it - but Gnome does. When I re-install a Gnome distro, there's only very little things I have to re-configure. Gnome simply works the way I like it, and it has everything I need. It just works. But still I'm not telling people that KDE sucks, because KDE definitely does not suck, it's simply not what *I* wanted.

I was simply tired of having to do hours of re-configuring everything until it worked as I liked. How can you say you spent hours configuring KDE, but Gnome just works? That statement is asinine. I spend 10 minuets configuring KDE to the way I like it, that includes downloading extra packages to get the themes and 'confusing' options I want.
I have no idea if I can configure Gnome to the way I like my windows displayed, I have not used it in years, but I assume it is not as easy as KDE. I like the close window 'X' on the left of the menu, and the rest of the buttons on the right.

You didn't read my post very carefully. I said that ->for me<- Gnome just happens to work almost exactly the way ->I<- want it, and KDE didn't, so I always had to re-configure it. As an example, back in my KDE time, when I installed any new KDE app, the first thing I did was to remove 90% of all the toolbar buttons, because *I* didn't like that.

I did *not* say "Gnome just works and KDE needs to be re-configured I lot" - I just said that for me personally, Gnome fits better, thus needs much, much less "initial" configuring, so I switched.

Seems to me that KDE is more for power users ... people who like to configure everything, including the kitchen sink.

Gnome seems as if it were catered to the OSX crowd - 'just give me something that just works and has sensible defaults out of the box so I don't have to think about it too much.'

I would think a combination of the above approaches would be ideal. On one hand, you don't want to make it so damn complicated that many users are put off by it, but at the same time, you don't want to alienate the power users either. So what you do is this:

1. Streamline the interface so that the 'just make it work' crowd aren't immediately put off by it
2. Give power users all the configurability they want, but put these options just far enough out of reach so that Joe Average will only find them if he makes the effort to look for them. As another poster said, maybe 'a master switch to change into some uber user mode'
3. ... but not TOO far out of reach where all the options are in config files, where only geeks will ever play with them

Personally, I fall into the power user crowd. For example, apps like Directory Opus are my cup of tea, where even the status bar is customizable to infinity So if I used Linux full-time, KDE would probably be me DE of choice.

This story involves a dull window manager, Metacity. The choice of it being the standard GNOME WM may be construed as an assumption that "people are idiots", but I prefer "people do not care". It's a sensible default given our society, just as the more general one for GUI over CLI, even though I much prefer CLI. For any who care, like Linus, why would they not have already customized by choosing an interesting WM? Those who do not know about the variety out there should see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_managerhttp://xwinman.org/

I found the sheer variety of UI philosophies of WMs fascinating and settled on Sawfish, which has powerful scripting and customizability along with decent performance. I am eager to read well-founded justifications for people's choice of WM.

It seems with KDE vs. GNOME we have:

(1) Most people, who don't care and use the likes of Metacity, whether on GNOME, KDE, etc.
(2) A few who are curious and explore non-standards
(3) The mindless who hear a famous name and then follow(*)
(4) GUI developers

I find (4) most interesting by far, but that's a little off-topic.

(*) I am not opposed to KDE at all, just the habit of mindless choice on any platform, such as when a famous name is invoked.

you say that gnome , its easier to change themes ... but you have to have a stupid deamon running , or use a .gtk-2.0rc file, and when you have both , mayhem happens.

What "mayhem"? The gconf deamon is for gnome's instant apply to work. When you change a setting all gnome apps are instantly updated, unlike KDE where you have to "OK" or "Apply" the setting and then sometimes even restart your applications or log out and in for the setting to be applied (like when changing the mouse cursor). You don't need to have the gconf deamon running to use gnome apps, unlike KDE where running a KDE app outside KDE brings up the whole kdeinit machinery (including dcop, klauncher etc.).

then you say that kde apps need kdelibs to work ... well ... DUH !

dont you also need a gtk app to change gtk themes ? what is the problem of using a kde app to change kde themes ?

I think what he's saying is that most gtk apps only requires gtk and not the whole gnome suit.

and kde apps work everywhere , they also work on gnome , fluxbox , they even work with twm.

And so does gnome/gtk apps. But I'd say that running gnome apps outside gnome is more beneficial than running KDE apps outside KDE for the reason I stated above.

in fact , its easier in kde , you only need qt and kdelibs ( and maybe kdebase , dont know ), in gnome , you need a trillion of libraries.

The only difference is that kdelibs is a monolithic package containg all the "trillions of libraries" when in gnome they are split up.

what kde machinery ? like why do i have to use a gnome-settings-deamon , if i just want to run an app ?
do you want an kde app to start without dcop ?! then how does it perform !? why do you want kdeapps to work as gnome apps , if they are diferent ?! i am very glad that they start all "the machinery", because i would not want a kdeapp without dcop outside kde.
why do you relate gconf with dcop ? do you know what you are talking about ? gconf is to gnome as kcontrol is to kde. do you need kcontrol running to use kde apps ?

but what is the problem of using kde apps outside kde ?!

because of kdelibs ?! its the libraries that that app may require. it has to be there.

as a gnome app needs gtk ( and not only , because if it only need gtk , its a gtk app , as a qt app only needs qt ) and other libraries , but not the whole gnome desktop. do an emerge ... nautilus , for example. if it only needs gtk+- and nothing else , then you are right.

the same , a kde app needs kdelibs , but not all kde(multimedia,pim,network,etc)

I like about Gnome that GTK2 apps are independent of Gnome, they can be used with nice GTK2 themes and so. By ~/.gtkrc-2.0 for example.

I'm using Gnome and have done so since Gnome 1.0 (back with Redhat 6 *eerk*) but have some QT-applications installed none-the-less. And no - not a single KDE-library of any kind. And I can switch QT-themes without KDE - I use QTConfig (QT4 must be compiled with QT3Support) instead. The Plastique (Plastik?) theme for KDE exists in a QT-variation called "polymer". Changing or using QT themes does not require KDE. Only KDE-themes require KDE.

And mess? Apart from cluttered GUI there is no mess in KDE. At least not codewise. That's Gnome's domain

*written in Firefox 1.5.0.9 in Gnome 2.16.2, Gentoo - just in case you want to call me a KDE troll :p*

you say that gnome , its easier to change themes ... but you have to have a stupid deamon running , or use a .gtk-2.0rc file, and when you have both , mayhem happens. Not under Gnome, without Gnome, only using ~/.gtkrc-2.0 [not .gtk-2.0rc] under Fluxbox for example.

then you say that kde apps need kdelibs to work ... well ... DUH !
dont you also need a gtk app to change gtk themes ? what is the problem of using a kde app to change kde themes ? Not KDE apps, QT based apps.

and kde apps work everywhere , they also work on gnome , fluxbox , they even work with twm. the same for Gnome/GTK2 apps, what it your point?

also , i am amazed how you dont think kde is very configurable. i think you missed on what kde can do.I used KDE for quite long time, have You ever used anything other then KDE?
Try Fluxbox/Openbox/Pekwm/FVWM then we will talk about configurability.

dylansmrjones (1.53)

The Plastique (Plastik?) theme for KDE exists in a QT-variation called "polymer". Changing or using QT themes does not require KDE.I do not like Plastik/Polymer theme, one of the uglyest I have ever seen, any other QT themes working without KDE? I am interested.

just in case you want to call me a KDE troll :p*I am not a person that likes to call everybody a troll.

I do not like Plastik/Polymer theme, one of the uglyest I have ever seen, any other QT themes working without KDE? I am interested.

I like the theme. The only QT/KDE-theme I like
There are some other QT-themes that works without KDE. The old ones are CDE, Motif and Windows and the new one is Cleanlooks (new, a QT-theme whichs look a bit like ClearLooks) and of course Plastique (for QT4).

For QT3 we have CDE, Motif, MotifPlus, Platinum (Mac OS 8.x look), SGI and Windows. And of course Polymer.

Some of us use KDE because we want to get a desktop that is not stuck in the early 90's. Like, fe., a thumbnail view in the open dialog that can even show thumbnails of videos.

Gnome not only doesn't show video thumbnails in the open dialog, it doesn't even have a thumbnail view. You're forced to use this completely stupid and user-unfriendly "select a file in order to preview it" method. With gnome you're stuck with a vertical list view that doesn't even allows to order files by *size*

Yes, KDE is not the most usable desktop, but you know, at least has the basic functionality to compete with 00's desktops.

Gnome not only doesn't show video thumbnails in the open dialog, it doesn't even have a thumbnail view. You're forced to use this completely stupid and user-unfriendly "select a file in order to preview it" method. With gnome you're stuck with a vertical list view that doesn't even allows to order files by *size*

This is misinformation. I really don't know when last you actually took the time to look at Nautilus, but I can assure you that KDE's file manager view sucks eggs in comparison. How does a comment like this get modded up to 5?

This whole discussion seems to be more about the KDE desktop manager Vs. the default Gnome desktop manager- rather than a debate about the various merits or demerits of the opposing application frameworks.

I agree to much of what Linus says on the subject, and yes, he is my hero too. However, it seems to me that too much weight is being given in this discussion to the subjective and biased views of fanboys.

Whether or not a particular app in the Gnome suite is dropped, or another fails to meet the needs of a particular user is hardly an accurate reflection of the goodness of Gnome. As someone said previously, the success and popularity of Ubuntu is a far better (and more objective) measure.

For myself, I cannot ignore the ubiquitous benefits brought by the antialiased Pango fonts, the sterling graphics provided by the Cairo vector graphics library (soon to be used for Firefox rendering as well), The close kernel integration and device transparency provided by DBus/HAL and the most amazing overall user experience brought to us by the Gnome developers.

If it's configurability you're after, simply replace the default window manager with XFCE. If it's KDE apps you need, load both frameworks at startup time. If you really don't like the XFCE file manager (which really sucks IMHO), replace it with Nautilus.

This is misinformation. I really don't know when last you actually took the time to look at Nautilus, but I can assure you that KDE's file manager view sucks eggs in comparison. How does a comment like this get modded up to 5?

Were I to try to substantiate this claim, apart from what I have already written, my comment would have been just as subjective as yours. You will note that I did NOT have the temerity to mod your own comment down, which I might have done- and which it appears that you needlessly did to mine. It would seem that you have a personal axe to grind.

It would be more useful to state why you disagree with me, rather than to add a silly one liner- which I note you pals have modded up to three for you.

Actually, I didn't mod your comment down. I'm really, genuinely interesting in finding out why you think Gnome's file manager is so much better than Konqueror. My comment was simply a prod to try to get you to enumerate your reasons by way of direct comparisons.

So I'm not disagreeing with you--I guess I don't have anything to explain then, other than to say I'm curious to hear your rational opinion....

Yes, KDE is not the most usable desktop, but you know, at least has the basic functionality to compete with 00's desktops.

So does Gnome. Personally I don't miss the option of sorting files in size order in the Open File dialogue.

The Open File dialogue is meant to open files, not acting as a file manager.

If you want files in arbitrarily sorted order use Nautilus.

The Open Dialogue in KDE is a disaster UI-wise compared with Gnome. The KDE-open dialogue is a poor ripoff from Windows 95 - almost pixel by pixel copy from Windows 95. Video thumbnails does not make it any better - au contraire!

It is slower to use. The old Windows 95 layout makes it difficult to switch to other devices like my Windows partitions. It's fine one can have different views but why is there no bookmarks? The lack of bookmarks means it takes several seconds to get to my windows partitions (mounted as /mnt/win*)

The mere fact I got modded down for objecting against a KDE troll says a lot.

How come the Windows95-style Open File dialogue is better than the Gnome Open File dialogue. The first one has not bookmarks and is slow to use, and the latter one has bookmarks. The lack of thumbnails is a non-issue since you have titles (File Names) to use.

Do you deny that the KDE/QT Open File dialogue is identical to the Windows95 Open File dialogue? (Oh please please deny it

"A KDE-troll is modded up to 5 for claiming the old Windows 95-style open dialogue is superior to the Gnome 2 open file dialogue."

It is much superior than Windows 95 style open dialogue. In fact, Gnome (Gtk) open dialog sucks big time. I had a LOT of problems, usability wise, with Gtk open dialog. Plus it gets redesigned all the time, things changing constantly (so it is not really designed) and is horrible.

KDE open dialogue has bookmarks, to the left, just right click and add the current directory with your preferred name and colorful icon. What's wrong with that?

The Open Dialogue is completely identical to the one in Windows95. No supports for bookmarks at all.

The GTK Open Dialogue doesn't change constantly. There has only been two different kinds in GTK+-2 and the one available right now was introduced in the GTK+-2.3 development series. And hasn't changed it's layout. The only difference since then is support for Find-as-you-type.

The GTK Open Dialogue has bookmarks to the left.
The KDE has none. It just consists of a window with:

* a drop-down combobox to choose between / and /home and /home/*user*
* a back-button
* an "One directory up"-button
* a "Create New directory" button
* a List View button
* a Detail View button
* a listbox for showing filenames
* a File Name textbox
* a drop-down combobox to choose file types to show
* an Open button
* a Cancel button
and of course a Pop-Up menu with Reload, Sort ->, and Show Hidden Files.

No bookmarks. No bookmarks at all - and a rip-off of the Open File Dialogue in Windows95 - but with fewer options.

The GTK+- open file dialogue has:

* a "Type a filename" button
* a "One directory up" button
* buttons representing the directory you are in, the upper directories (if you have visited them) and the lower directories (if you have visited them) - a bit like the bread crumbs in Vista - just older than Vista's
* A Bookmark list to the left
* A File View list to the right
* An "Add" button to add directories and files to the Bookmark list
* A "Remove" button to remove bookmarks
* A cancel button
* An Open button
* And a drop-down box to choose file types to show.

The KDE (or the QT) open file dialogue has no Bookmarks and only a subset of the functionality in the Windows95 Open File dialogue.

EDIT: It is of course possible, I need to seriously upgrade my KDE/QT-libraries. In that case, please notify me

I personally find the KDE file dialogs much, much superior to the GNOME ones. The main reasons are:

(a) Autocompletion drives me mad in the GNOME file dialog. Let's say I want to select something in the /mnt/storage/iso directory. Getting to /mnt/storage is fine, but then I type /i and it fills it in to /iso. Great, right? Nope, it displays /mnt/storage/iso but it thinks that I want just plain /mnt/storage/i, so naturally gives me an error. WTF?

(b) After I manage to beat it into submission that I really want /mnt/storage/iso, it thinks that it's the file I want, not the directory I want to browse in. So it gives me another error "Invalid file: /mnt/storage/iso". Then it finally shows me what's in /mnt/storage/iso and let's me select the file I want. Finally!

(c) Dare I say, it has a lot more options. I can select whether I want a detailed list view or a preview view. You can also select whether it shows folders separate from directories, and whether hidden files are shown, etc... The default is sane, and I use that 99% of the time, but if I really want to change it, I can. How you can say that the GTK+ file picker has more options than the KDE one is beyond me.

For reference, I'm on Debian Sid with a slightly old version of GNOME (2.14) and a slightly newer version of KDE (3.5.5).

a) The dialogue is only _suggesting_ a solution. You need to accept the suggestion before it works. Just like autocompletion in Firefox.

b) The behaviour depends on applications installed - if I choose an iso it is opened, so I can see it's content - if opened with an application that can handle ISO-files.
Trying to open ISO-files in Gimp is a mistake

c) The GTK+ Open File Dialogue also has an option for showing hidden files - and it defaults to separate folders from files. However, you can only have a detailed list. No preview, but you don't need those when opening from inside an application (if you need preview the application is buggy since it shows files it shouldn't) and that's the only time you will see the open file dialogue.

1) Clean well-structured and simplified layout which guides the user to the right places,

OR

2) Remove functionality.

Gnome has leaned towards solution 2 for a long time. Personally I especially miss the centralized Mime Type Editor which was removed in Gnome 2.8. Very annoying when Gimp screws up your actions and you have to right-click on a dozen image files with different mime types in order to make eog default application for images.

Personally I especially miss the centralized Mime Type Editor which was removed in Gnome 2.8. Very annoying when Gimp screws up your actions and you have to right-click on a dozen image files with different mime types in order to make eog default application for images.

I miss the Mime Type Editor too, but face it, if we go trough any medium sized city at lunch time and ask every grown up person you meet what MIME Type is, you would most likely find that you would have that knowledge in less than ten percent of the people you meet. So I would say removal was justified.

Perohaps Gnome should introduce some kind of TweakUI application to keep powerusers happy.

The fact that a lot of non-Gnome users or non-Power Users don't grasp doesn't mean removal was justified.

There are millions of Power Users in this world. Millions of Gnome Power Users. That's enough to justify a Mime Type Action Editor.

It doesn't have to be called a Mime Type Editor - it could be called a File Action Editor.

Instead of only a decentralized Mime Type Editor/File Action Editor, I also want a centralized Mime Type Editor/File Action Editor.

Sometimes I want to use the decentralized editor - other times (that would be after compiling Gimp or Bluefish) I definitely want to use a centralized editor.

Your argument only justifies both editors or none of them. Since people don't know what mime types are there shouldn't be an editor at all. Neither decentralized or centralized. That's the logical conclusion of your argument.

I miss the Mime Type Editor too, but face it, if we go trough any medium sized city at lunch time and ask every grown up person you meet what MIME Type is, you would most likely find that you would have that knowledge in less than ten percent of the people you meet. So I would say removal was justified.

10% of users is a very significant percentage. If you removed every feature that only 10% of users used you would end up with a very useless desktop. People love to talk about how people only use some low percentage of a program's features, so the program must be bloated for including all those other features. Of course, different users use a different subset of features, so removing any of them will make people angry.

Of course there are some low hanging fruit for improving usability, where changing the way something works, or removing a feature is demonstratively better for everyone, but these kinds of things are not as common as some people seem to think. Usually changing something involves a tradeoff.

I find it very strange that you are willing to accept that Gnome removed a feature that you enjoyed, because it wouldn't make sense for the average user. As a user, I want the best experience for myself, I don't give a crap about this mythical average user. When I'm using Windows I have no choice but to accept their stupid design decisions, but in Linux I would never tolerate something like that. In Linux I have the freedom to use other alternatives if a project does not conform to how I use my computer.

I like the default layout of Gnome, but as Linus said, once you're over the initial learning curve, I find it very limiting. Average user be damned! I want software that works for me.

1) It's easier,
2) It'll give you a lot of bitching users requesting/demanding all kinds of features and complaining about the lack of them,
3) The whining users' requests for features gives you a great road map.

Well, you more or less described GNOME development (but I guess that was your intention

Create a braindead file dialogue in the name of simplicity, than listen to your users. Refuse to have a menu editor, than listen to user's request. Hardcode mouse button functionality in C ... and listen to your users (we have to wait about that though...)

True, people usually don't know all about their car engine. That's why many parameters e.g. regarding fuel injection usually doesn't make it to the dash board. People want to be able to concentrate on the traffic around them not gauges and controls they don't know how to read or use.

No, you should not hack out the engine with an axe. You should buy a car where the user interface to the engine is simple enough for you to use it comfortably.

E.g. if you don't feel comfortable with driving with a stick, you should be able to buy a fully automatic one even if the Ferrari users of the world would claim that you are an idiot that should learn how to drive a real car.

There is Gnome and there is KDE and it is a good thing that they are different.

the interface of kde is the same as gnome , as windows , as osx , as etc ! it was invented long ago by apple ( cof cof ) , and its called wimp.
they all use the same thing ...

and dont start saying kde interface is bloated ... it is not, as my kde interface is way less bloated than gnome ever can be. kde , does , however , have very a very bad default interface. ( unless in some distros , like open suse )

so , in terms of interface , they are all the same. the diference is under the hood !

when you open kde's hood , you may say " wow , i dont know what this is all " ... thats ok

when you open gnome's hood , you see an empty space and say " good , i didnt know what that thing was anyway "

if gnome just hid the configuration from the interface ( like kde does ) it would be nice and well though !

I miss the Mime Type Editor too, but face it, if we go trough any medium sized city at lunch time and ask every grown up person you meet what MIME Type is, you would most likely find that you would have that knowledge in less than ten percent of the people you meet. So I would say removal was justified.

You underestimate the users. Most users are very good at ignoring stuff they don't understand or don't need. In the VCR-days, I bet only 10% used the clock. That doesn't mean that the clock should be removed.

You underestimate the users. Most users are very good at ignoring stuff they don't understand or don't need

Exactly - I don't know where this ridiculous idea of the poor confused user who can't accomplish a task because there is an extra button on the toolbar he or she doesn't understand comes from.

Back in the win98 days, I've seen users adding that freaking floating MS office toolbar to the desktop, and putting buttons on it. The same buttons that were on the desktop as well as in the Start menu. I never ever received any complaint because they were there. Apparently, someone was used to it because that's how his neighbour installed office for him, so he enabled it on some of the computers in our library. I kept removing the cruft - not because anyone complained, but because they were hogging system resources. Noone was confused, people just ignored it as long as they could find those icons at the usual places.

This has been my experience with using unix desktops as well. People sit down at my computer to check their mails, and sometimes they don't even notice that they are using konqueror instead of IE, even though it opens gmail in html format. They just go on doing what they intended to do: check their mails, without paying too much attention to my "open terminal here" button on the extra toolbar I have on the right side of my konqueror window. And yet, these self proclaimed "usability experts" will go on saying that the average user will be confused and terrified if there are more ways of doing things on your desktop, or God forbid, there are some extra buttons on a toolbar.

You miss that mimetype-editor? Really it was a pain to use. You hardly could find the mimetype you were looking for, zillions of mimetypes (sometimes even listed multiple times), no search, it hardly worked.
You talk about "Clean well-structured and simplified layout" and want the old mimetype-editor back. What a contrast.

The new system is so much better. There is one thing it fails: Change the default app for a group of mimetypes, e.g. open all video files with mplayer instead of totem.

But don't be sad, because there is a concept design for a central mimetype-editor on the ubuntu wiki. And a nautilus dev showed interest in it. So maybe you'll get your toy. (Hopefully done right this time. )
Oh and the link to the spec: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Usability/SpecEnhancedPreferredApps

"There is one thing it fails: Change the default app for a group of mimetypes, e.g. open all video files with mplayer instead of totem.

Right on. And it's a PITA."

You have a point there but you can always use your distro's package manager to choose the application of choice. You just install what you want to use for a certain mime type and uninstall any other app that handles it. My case in point is I hate Totem for video handling, I much prefer VLC so I remove Totem from my system, install VLC and my problem is solved.

From a user standpoint, Gnome has a lot to offer especially on the Corporate Desktop. You don't want to much in the way of easily accessible configuration options just very sane defaults. Saves time and allows for a user to go from one system to another and use it quickly without thinking "OMG, where do I start". If you have a lot of time on your hands on your home desktop and want to be artistic, then there are many choices on the Linux front for creative GUI interfaces. Gnome ain't it though and nor should it be, it's trying to maintain UI consistancy.

I prefer one application pr. Mime Type - but only when it covers my need for task solving. For some Mime Types I prefer more than one application because the applications solve different tasks (like eog vs. Gimp).

EDIT: BTW. UI consistancy has nothing to do with the options available. UI consistancy has something to do with _how_ you make them available. I agree that Gnome shouldn't drown in all kind of weird options (as in KDE) - but this won't happen if designers follow the Gnome HIG. It's perfectly possible to have "advanced" configuration options and still be Gnome HIH compliant - it just "forces" you to think twice (or thrice) about the UI layout.

In a way, I think the GNOME opinion is that your computer can process data a lot quicker than your brain can, therefore why not let it?

If you like to micromanage your desktop environment and set it up so it's perfect for you, then use practically any non-GNOME DE, otherwise GNOME is quite a nice simple choice for those of us who just like the computer deciding how best to act.

I mean, I'm pretty sure that most people would get annoyed quickly if your system asked you to locate your USB mass storage device for every USB thing you put in simply incase one time you wanted to use a different driver or something. For the most part, you want it to do the most sane thing and don't really care about the particulars. Maybe GNOME sometimes take it a little to far but still, it sounds like GNOME isn't really the sort of UI Linus should bother with at all.

Since reading doesn't seem to be your forte, I'll try to some it up here to make it easier for you.

There is a feature that everyone else has, but GNOME lacks: configuration of the functionality of mouse buttons.

The question is this: why is this missing? One of the arguments Linus assumes is that GNOME developers think that this would "confuse" users - or generally, too many options confuse users. Now that's where the idiot argument comes in: Linus thinks that this is an "assault" on the average user's intelligence.

Is he right? That's another question. I just checked how to configure my mouse buttons - found it in a few seconds in control center:

Now I never needed this functionality, so I had to search for it. I didn't even notice that this option is there - though I've been using KDE for years. I very much think that the fact that this option exists, and is easily accessible if one needs it, won't "confuse" Average Joe. Average Joe is not _that_ easily confused, or as Linus would put it, he is not an idiot.

You have to admit that similar functionality was removed (or rejected) from GNOME on the same "it would confuse users" pretext. Linus's problem with this is scalability: he agrees that the GUI should provide an easy learning curve for beginners (see his game analogy) - but strongly rejects the idea that this can only be achieved by removing functionality. Once you reached the end of that learning curve, you may develop new needs (like making your work more efficient by providing a better left click menu - like in Linus's case). Therefore, the functionality should be there if you need it, but in a non-intrusive way. This is rather a question of _organizing_ functionality for him (and that is the route KDE takes, and has taken for the past 5 years at least, without any sign that _actual_ users find it too confusing and they switch to GNOME in flocks).

As more and more functionality was removed from GNOME, we have arrived at a stage of workarounds: individual programs that you can download from the internet if you want to configure certain aspects of your desktop. How userfriendly is that? Or you have to use gconf editor, which again, is not exactly userfriendly. What's more, in this specific case, you can't even do that, because mouse button functionality is hardcoded - I think that is ridiculous.

Let me give you one final example.

Imagine installing Windows XP power tools (I came up with this name, I don't remember the name of the real program) - a utility that provides easy access to configuration options in Windows that are not readily available for Average Joe. Now, would you claim that merely having this application installed would make Average Joe's life more difficult? Average Joe won't even notice that he has this application unless you draw his attention to it.

Linus's gripe is with rejecting functionality on the pretext that users will be confused. It is not Linus who thinks that users are idiots, in fact, the whole point of his argument is that they are not, unlike some of the design decisions of the GNOME developers (and the pretext to those decisions) would suggest. I don't know how could anyone arrive at the conclusion that Linus said GNOME users are idiots, whereas his main problem is that it is designed as if users were idiots.

Your post is right on (and for the record I like KDE better than Gnome), but I must say you inadvertently touched on exactly one of the most annoying things about KDE: the randomness and labrynthine navigability of the Control Center's organization.

What are the mouse button actions doing under Desktop--Behavior? Why are they not under something like "Mouse/Keyboard" where they belong?

Your point that you never noticed this feature just serves to highlight its poor placement. As to your statement that users haven't been "driven to use Gnome" by KDE's poor organization: 1) Maybe they have, we don't know, and 2) There's not really any other choice if you want a configurable DE. Just because users stick with it by no means proves that KDE's layout is "correct" or "optimal".

I personally think tree-based settings layouts suck, and so do browser-inspired ones (which hide certain functions and make you use a "back" button). KDE's Control panel has suffered from both of these. A logically organized matrix of icons that bring up tabbed dialogue boxes is the best solution, imho. As long as it doesn't require removal of functionality/configurability, as Gnome does.

What are the mouse button actions doing under Desktop--Behavior? Why are they not under something like "Mouse/Keyboard" where they belong?

Yes, now that's a good question! The easy answer (GNOME way) is to remove it - which caps the scalability of the desktop at the "idiot" level as Linus would put it. Thinking about how to organize it is far more difficult - but in the end, it is way better than simply removing it.

Linus had a point when he said that:

"ONLY being easy to use" is bad, because it means that once the initial
learning curve is over, maybe you know the program, but you can't actually
do what you WANT to do. And that's *bad*. That's *really* bad. It's
actually much worse than being hard to use to begin with, in many ways.

This is clearly a case of hard to use: I was looking for this option under peripherals/mouse, than in window behaviour (where you have settings about clicking on window borders) and Desktop Behavior was the last place I looked at. Still, it was only a minute (instead of 10 seconds) - but this is still better than missing this option entirely. Some GNOME advocates would say that "Average Joe" would have given up at this point. This is ridiculous - if someone badly needs this function, I think he or she would have no difficulty in finding it eventually, and wouldn't consider the 1-2 minutes spent looking such a big deal. But still, you have a point: this shouldn't be a question of removal/rejection, it should be a question of better organization.

What are the mouse button actions doing under Desktop--Behavior? Why are they not under something like "Mouse/Keyboard" where they belong?

Because it has more to do with windows behavior than with mouse settings. That's why.

Do you also question MS for their settings placements ? Or you just go along with it ? Why do people think it's alright to criticize a FOSS project without any contribution, just because it's FOSS ? Yes, I know these days anyone with a computer thinks they could do better, but still. Get a life, people.

Yes, I do question MS for their settings placement. I'm an equal opportunity UI criticizer, thank you very much.

Why do people think it's alright to criticize a FOSS project without any contribution, just because it's FOSS?

Because part of the idea of FOSS is that non-coders can still aid in development by testing out apps and giving feedback. But apparently, you are of the mentality that all feedback from someone who cannot code is useless. Even when they give this feedback in a constructive manner, as I thought I was doing.

Quite frankly, even though I can code, I find your attitude to be elitist and shortsighted. Why do you assume that just because someone has contributed a lot of code, that they know about end-user requirements and/or good UI design? Why do you assume that just because someone can't code, they don't have any useful suggestions?

It's exactly this whole "we programmers will dictate what is best for you, and if you don't contribute code yourself, f@#$ off" mentality that Linus is criticizing here.

Why do people think it's alright to criticize a FOSS project without any contribution, just because it's FOSS ?

Criticism is a valuable form contribution. Provided it is given at the right place, such as bugzilla of the project or usability and developer lists where the developers are supposed to find it.

You also have to be constructive. Just saying something is bad doesn't help anyone, but if you can provide a reason why something doesn't work, and how it could be changed to work better you are usually very welcome.

Most open source developers are more than willing to make their products more usable. They often use their open source work as advertisement of their skills. This means that the more people that use their product and like it the better for them.

Naturally time is limited, so sometimes your idea doesn't end up at the top of the list. A way to change the order on that list could be to make donations or hire somebody to make the patches needed if you haven't the time or the coding skills to do it yourself. Open source developers want to eat, have roof over their head and just like you and me.

Today, big projects like KDE and Gnome needs lots of skills to move forward. The time when coding in C was the only skill required to keep a project of the size of KDE or Gnome on the top is long gone.

From a non-expert's point of view, KDE feels technically superior to Gnome, the apps are more consistent with each other, and there are a lot of QT apps that I like. But, KDE is too complicated for me. The menu seems put together at random and the options are never where you expect them to be. On the other hand Gnome feels designed more with human beings in mind and is much easier to use. I wish that Linus would understand that an operating system is to be used mainly by normal people and not by geeks.

Point is, you'll get used to KDE quickly, and it's features will allow you to work faster and better. It's simply a trade-off: if you use your computer 4 hours a week for some surfing, well, Gnome should do, it's better for that. You get used to it fast, even tough you don't use your pc much. But if you use it daily, KDE won't get as much in your way, as it generally allows for more ways to accomplish something (so you can do it the fastest) and is better configurable so you can work more efficiently.

It's not like KDE is for ppl using their computers all day and Gnome isn't good enough for that - of course it is. But it's less efficient. Many things simply take more mouseclicks, and there are way more tricks to do things super-fast in KDE compared to Gnome. Not to mention the fact the default Gnome theme is a waste of space - you can fit almost twice as much on your screen with the standard KDE theme. The gnome one looks better (well, Ubuntu's does) but it's not nice if you have 800x600... Better have a 17" 1600x1200 or even 1900x1440 screen.

I will work faster if i use KDE? I've tested it... i work extrem slowly. So... does User work faster with Gnome? No... it's a User choice which Desktop Enviroment is better for you. I'm a PowerUser... work every day many hours on the PC with Gnome Desktop... it's for me the better choice. For other people also. And other people can work better with KDE. So why this stupid war? KDE IS NOT BETTER THEN GNOME AND GNOME IS NOT BETTER THEN KDE. so simple...

It's not like you're likely to notice the diff in one day, but after trying both for some serious time, you will. It's mostly small things, but they add up.

And I don't say Gnome can't be a better choice, and that efficiency isn't such a big thing - many ppl use Windows XP daily. Gnome and KDE both kick XP's butt in almost every aspect, and whoever becomes really better than the other - the free desktop prevails ;-)

I'm not quite sure what I get by the "default Gnome theme is a waste of space" are you talking about the dual panels? Every Default KDE install I've seen uses a larger panel at the bottom, usually three times the height of one of the Gnome Panels, in essence wasting more space. If you're referring to the actual window manager / gtk theme, then again I think you're confused, Plastik is just as large.

Plus on top of this, I've never had the weird issue with "My Fonts are HUGE!" with Gnome that I have occasionally with KDE. Not sure why that happens, but I usually try out KDE with every new release or at the most every other release, and there are still occasions when that ugly bug rears it's head.

By huge, I mean they are about 64 point size, so you can fit three sentences on my 1680x1050 Laptop.

it's not the panels, it's the widgets. KDE menu's are tighter, all it's buttons etc are smaller, there is less free space between things etcetera.

The font issue is because KDE does comply to the DPI settings in X.org, while gnome always uses 96 dpi, regardless of the real dpi. You can disable this behavior and ignore the dpi settings at the font dialog in KDE.

Not anymore... With KDE4, icon button widgets have text labels underneath, just like GNOME. The small, unlabeled icon buttons in KDE3 are a HUGE usability no-no. The larger buttons mean less of them can fit in the default UI, so the designer needs to determine the most-used actions and make the rest easily accessible through menu or button pull-downs/overs.

By the way, in KDE you can control this globally, which isn't even possible in Gnome - you'd have to change this in each application separately (tough that's still possible in KDE).

And it's not bad to take this kind of measures, to restrain yourself and force yourself to clean up the interface. I'm not just talking about the amount of buttons, it's more. Integration, drag'n'drop, consistency - KDE excels in those, far beyond Windows, Mac OS X and Gnome. It's not perfect, sure, but hey, what is?

It looks like someone needs to fire up the cluetrain and run over you...

There happens to be this nifty preferences capplet in gnome called "Menu and Toolbar Preferences" under System --> Preferences. One of the selections in it is a dropdown menu with the label:
Toobar button labels

In that dropdown, you have the options of:
-Icons only
-Text only
-Text Below Icons
-Text Beside Icons

You might also note that this changes the gconf key:
/desktop/gnome/interface/toolbar_style

Which happens to instantly take affect globally in all gnome applications. If you are going to flame gnome, that is fine, but at least prove that you have a clue. Otherwise, you look like another one of the slashdot trolls. KDE is a great DE and so is Gnome. Shut up with the stupid trolling already.

right, I'm sorry. I've tried this quite some time ago, and it didn't seem possible at all... I might have looked at the wrong places, or it has been added. Either way, sorry. I don't try Gnome that often...

I think this has been mentioned before elsewhere, but KDE's menu bars are actually a little bit too tight if you ask me. A little more space between the File menu, Edit, View and so on would make a world of difference. Hopefully KDE4 will do this.

Not if you're like me. I can't work effectively with lots of controls, text and options onscreen. The more onscreen the slower my brain can complete the task (probably cubically or something) since I have more data to process, and being able to handle things like that quickly is one of my bad points.

Maybe I'm dyslexic or something, but the point remains. I gave KDE a fair chance and used it for a few months and found it wasn't for me. I use a computer for about 10 hours a day for various reasons, and now I use GNOME and OS X.

Vista is the worst IMO of all for visual complication; all they seem to have done is multiplied the amount of text in the interface and removed some icons, KDE feels like an empty white room almost in comparison.

Well, I agree there might be personal differences, and sure KDE is a bit overdone right now. Which slows everybody down to a certain extend, I guess. They're working on it, tough, and more importantly - they're willing to. A 'larger' theme might help, and distributions like Kubuntu clean KDE up a bit so that helps, too.

And indeed, while Mac OS X started to clean things up a long time ago, Microsoft still doesn't really get it...

You're exactly right, some things about KDE just don't make sense. Which is all the more reason that I wish Gnome provided a more usable alternative. Until it does, I guess I'm stuck with KDE's randomness, because at least I can do what I want if I search hard enough, whereas in Gnome I just can't.

"I wish that Linus would understand that an operating system is to be used mainly by normal people and not by geeks."

The underlying operating system has nothing to do with KDE or GNOME. People, "normal" ones or "geeks", primarily use a graphical user interface. By the way, real "geeks" won't use either KDE or GNOME, they would use something you don't know as their GUI - or even prefer command line operations. :-)

So please don't mix OS and GUI. Know what the OS is for, and what the GUI is for.

In addition, I agree with your post. There are some things about KDE I don't like and surely won't get familiar with, but same is for GNOME, but in other regards. So, for example, I use WindowMaker and XFCE.

In the case you might ask for: I usually encounter problems setting up KDE or GNOME systems when it comes to internationalisation, i. e. setting german language for everything. "But it's not in german!" is the main reason why people complain about non-KDE apps in KDE. Other compain: "It doesn't work!"

As it was mentioned before, Linus is a kernel developer. Let him make his choice. So if he likes KDE, he can use it. He won't prohibit anyone to use something else.

KDE could benefit from the several good approaches and concepts that GNOME includes.

Finally, I prefer Gtk over Qt when it comes to development of user interfaces. Call me old fashioned, call me stupid, but it works for me. :-)

...is kind of retarded don't you think? Kind of makes you wonder why it's still not possible for technophiles to pick up and use Linux without almost constant supervision (hey, don't even pretend examples of this happening are widespread).

The needs of a developer like Linus Torvalds is most likely very different from that of e.g. my accountant,
and as far as I know there are far more accountants than Linus Torvalds out there. So it seams like a smart move to develop for the accountants and similar types of users.

Even if you are smart and knows all there is to know about computers, you may decide that your time is spent better doing real work than configure your work environment. Gnome allows for this choice.

On the other hand, if Linus can contribute something that is of use to more than a relatively small group of developers, or doesn't get in the way of more frequent user types, I would guess and hope that his patches gets accepted.

I guess a part of me still wishes the Gnome and KDE guys would just get together. For me, at least, I like both interfaces. Both have there quirks and niceties, both look nice in places and not so nice in other places. But hey, I'm realistic and know it's never going to happen! I can but dream though! :-)

I am a self-confessed switcher as I like to try the latest builds of both when they release them.

I care. As a Gnome User and Power User I understand why Linus is waging a "war". Gnome-devs have a good point in regard to simplified and clear GUI-layout - but the excessive removal of functionality we've seen in Gnome 2.8 and subsequent releases are too limiting.

Especially Metacity needs some love. It doesn't make sense you have to mess with the user-unfriendly GConf in order to remove animations or enable wireframed windows. There could easily be two tickboxes in "Windows Preferences".

It's always somewhat funny in a perverted kinda way when we get another sample of how people's attitude changes when they turn towards free software development, as a whole. Suddenly they feel competent enough to dismiss people's opinions who've done more for FOSS then a whole lot of bunch of forum talkers.

My thoughts exactly, Linus is human being and would have biases (maybe a better way to put it would be preferences). Linus has every right to like or dislike a particular desktop and so do we. The main purpose of any desktop environment is to make the user interact with the computer to get his/her job done without going through a manual, GNOME and KDE do that job pretty well.

What seems unfair about this thing is that it doesn't matter if the patches are useful, if GNOME doesn't accept them, they look like the bad guys.

But if any other guy had submitted a patch along with those obnoxious words no one would blame them if they told the guy to piss off. I wonder how far patches to the kernel would make it from someone who is actively insulting Linux.

I am just a bit upset about the way this communication happened between
people from GNOME and some contributor. I say some contributor here
because we should not make any difference between people willing to
help us. Linus is like anyone else and if he sent patches to the wrong
mailing list than we can politely tell him. Of course, Linus might not
have ever been fair to the GNOME community but nevertheless nobody
should treat him differently than anybody else therefore (see Code
of Conduct).

Linus apparently feels himself too important to bother with the likes of bugzilla, like everyone else is expected to do. (FWIW, some of his patches have already been accepted.)

IMO, the story here is not what is good for GNOME, Linus's conduct, or dogma such as "code instead of constructive dialog". Instead, it is the special treatment itself, treatment that tells even consistent, reliable contributors that because they are not famous, they must bear burdens and uncertainty from which the famous are exempt. This kind of disrespect of both contributors and the project sets a bad precedent. The argument that the rough conduct that's good enough for the linux kernel development should be good enough for any other project is bogus and presumptuous. The project itself sets the rules. Period.

The responsibility lies with GNOME. They now need to reassure their community that their doors are open for everyone.

... many users would prefer to, at least, have the possibility to use advanced features in GNOME.

The man is right. When the developers start deciding that it will confuse their users this will start to feel idiots (unless they really are).
I miss many features in GNOME that I find in KDE. Mainly, configuration and window behaviour

The man is right. When the developers start deciding that it will confuse their users this will start to feel idiots (unless they really are).

You have just offended a lot of people (who are NOT idiots).
Also i don't agree with that opinion. I know people, who are certainly not idiots, who don't want to waste time on searching for options, trying them out to see what they actually do, etc... simply because they are not interested in that, they have better (for them) things to do.

I miss many features in GNOME that I find in KDE. Mainly, configuration and window behaviour

So use KDE and don't try to force GNOME to be like KDE.
For me KDE's UI is messy, and full of things i don't care about - that's why i use GNOME. But i'm not trying to force it on other people - use whatever You want, just let me use whatever i want.

I've never once read, seen or heard a GNOME developer say "I'm not going to put that it because it would confuse users". I've only *ever* heard it put into the mouth of some hypothetical GNOME developer by someone who clearly doesn't use GNOME or follow its development.

(edit: GNOME developers only have one mouth each, as far as I know...)

Today I talked with Frederic Crozat, GNOME packager/maintainer and
desktop developer here at Mandriva, and David Barth, vice president for
engineering, about the development of the printing dialogs in GNOME,
Firefox, and Thunderbird.

Frederic told that the options from the PPD file are intentionally mot
listed in the printing dialog, the usability team of GNOME was against
listing these options. They clutter the dialog and can be more confusing
than useful to the user.

This is where Linus piped in, making the by now famous "just use kde" remark. The post is funny in itself - shows how a simple feature request like this can be entangled in usability bureaucracy: instead of just adding it, and seeing how it works, there is this entire proposal of how it should be done, than there is mention of a usability conference when this should be discussed further, with no sight of actual code being written and tried out - it is not surprising that the always down to earth Linus was somewhat annoyed by this

Obviously I have nothing against Fred, but that is hearsay. This is my point, really - I've never actually heard a GNOME developer or a usability team member or whatever say "we're not doing it because it's too confusing". All you ever hear is someone else *saying* that they said that.

If I recall correctly, it turned out that the specific basis for Linus' initial rant was based on misinformation.

Ah, I found it:

"""I'm just going to correct some things Till wrote that I would have said.
It seems either I didn't explained correctly, or Till misunderstood my
explanations (or probably a little of both) on what was the current
state of printing on GNOME and why full PPD options were not in GNOME
yet and why they probably would not go in it by just a snap of a finger
but only after careful interface reviewing. Thus the original message
was sent by Till on GNOME usability mailing list, to try to discuss how
to improve GNOME printing UI.

Thanks to Jeff, Alex and others, the real reasons on why GNOME printing
UI is currently lacking full PPD support have been exposed.

I'm still a little sad to see that a attempt to try to improve printing
support in GNOME and in Firefox/Thunderbird (so, for Desktop on Linux in
general) has been transformed into a gigantic flamewar for absolutely no
good reason, except exhausting electrons for carrying those emails

Hopefully, things will be rolling in the good direction in the future,
with the Printing summit and each project initiatives.

When the developers start deciding that it will confuse users users will start to feel idiots (unless they really are) I do feel irritated (not the only one so it seems) with that.

Indeed. I have some experience with users who can be considered the proverbial "Average Joes" GNOME folks often refer to. The kind of users that think Microsoft Office is an operating system (really - when I asked one what OS he has on his laptop, he told me that it runs office). I witnessed these users sit down in front of konqueror, and immediately begin using it, despite the fact that my webprofile not only has extra buttons, but an entire vertical toolbar on the right. Were they confused by that open terminal here button? They weren't - for they were looking for the visual cues they expected from a browser: back, forward, reload, an address bar - which were all in place.

I was leaving my room when my girlfriend said that she will check her mails if I don't mind. I shouted back OK without realizing that she never used a non-windows desktop before. On my way back I was thinking about this, and when I arrived, she was busy typing her email in konqueror and gmail (which opened gmail in html view, something that should have confused here, afterall, he never used gmail in html mode). Now it is flattering to think that my girlfriend's intelligence is way above average - and I think it is But I'm firmly convinced that users are not as easily "confused" as some of the GNOME devs would think.

And what really bothers me is when I hear these "KDE is confusing, cluttered, etc" arguments, all coming from people who _are_ actually power users (inasmuch as they know what an OS is, they know about GNOME and KDE and Desktop Environments in general). I never met this proverbial "Averige Joe" who couldn't use KDE because there were 3 text editors installed by default, or more than one media players. And still, you see people speaking in the name of moms and pops and average joes claiming how incredibly confusing that "other" desktkop is. Hilarious.

Free Software means... use what you like... if Linus can't work with gnome... only he is an idiot. If i want all these buttons, boxes, slides and wheels - then i will use KDE. But i don't. I just want work. So i prefer GNOME. I don't need thousends of Config Buttons to feel free.

Just like any other gnome-hater guy does, many people critizes gnome here, in osnews. Except that Linus is a important person and people listens him.

That's the only "problem" here: Linus doesn't seem to care that thousands of people will read what he says. But he is not doing anything that many people, including myself (I even wrote a page about it that got osnews'ed) have done.

I think Linus's point is not that he hates Gnome, but that he wants Gnome to be better, and the Gnome devs aren't listening. The whole point is that KDE can be overwhelming... but as long as Gnome doesn't adequately satisfy the needs of power users, they have no choice but to go to KDE, despite its flaws.

I#m a PowerUser and on KDE... i can't be a PowerUser because a have to click, push, spin, slide to have an DE which let me work fast, direct and productiv. Gnome has a lot of PowerUser. User that want Work... not play.

It is rather telling that so far none of the comments I see here addressed the specific issues Linus raised. If you are enthusiastic about GNOME, than now you hate Linus, if you prefer KDE, you agree with him. On what? That should be the question we discuss here - is he right about the issues he raised? Lets see some of them:

He begins with some generic statements: There is a _huge_ difference between "being easy to use" and "_only_ being
easy to use".

"Being easy to use" is important, because it means that there isn't a very
high learning curve. That's _good_.

"ONLY being easy to use" is bad, because it means that once the initial
learning curve is over, maybe you know the program, but you can't actually
do what you WANT to do. And that's *bad*. That's *really* bad. It's
actually much worse than being hard to use to begin with, in many ways.

Game designers know about this. You don't want to make your games too
challenging, because if you do, people never get "into" them. But if you
don't give people challenges along with the game, and don't allow them to
"grow" with the game, the game sucks.

But he doesn't stop there, he goes on to not only show specific instances, but offer solutions:

I *know* what I want. I *know* gnome doesn't support it. How do I know?
I've used it. I looked at the code. I talked to the original author of the
code. The author, and the code, all agree: gnome doesn't do what I want.

I want something very simple: I want to configure my mouse button window
events. That doesn't sound so bad, does it? Everybody else can do it,
gnome does not. My laptop has a two-button mouse, which means that I want
the right button to do something more useful than show me the menu that I
never use.

So he did send in a patch that provides this functionality. Now, through this exchange, we can see more clearly his problems. Or more precisely, we can see what GNOME devs. do about these issues. Will they accept these patches or reject it? If they reject, what pretext will they use? That - as Linus claims - because my mom, sister, whomever doesn't need this functionality, it won't be included (and it confuses the proverbial "average user", you know the arguments...) Would such an answer be OK? What about scalability (another of Linus's questions - you know, when you are at the end of that learning curve, and you want this or that functionality, and it is simply not there, or if it is, it is in the form of gconf keys, which is not exactly user friendly). If they accept, than what prevented GNOME implementing this feature before? Really, what was the justification to hardcode the left click function? Was it technical, or again, the - paraphrasing Linus - "we are designing for idiots" philosophy?

I believe that the kind of criticism Linus provides is very useful. What he does is the par excellence example of constructive criticism, as opposed to what people make out of it. Every single inflammatory statement is backed up with specific examples, very acute reasoning, and even solutions. I don't pretend to be a GNOME fan, but if I were, I'd be very happy about this kind of criticism. This helps more GNOME than fanboyism (which means uncritically accepting whatever justifications devs come up with against change).

I don't really get it. The right-click in Gnome is a context-sensitive menu. It is different depending on where you click, what you click on. Right-clicking on a file is something I do a lot. So he doesn't want that?? He wants ?what? instead? Right-clicking on the desktop is also standard Nautilus behaviour. Right-clicking on a Gnome-panel gives you panel options. He doesn't want that? What would he like to replace it with??

"BTW, I start XFCE instead of GNOME. Even XFCE has more features (for me that is).

Anyone else does this too ?"

Jawohl mein Herr. :-) I use XFCE 3 at work. Why? Because it's fast, it serves all upcoming purposes and my boss is smart enough to handle it. His machine is a 300 MHz P2 with 8 GB HDD and 128 MB RAM. KDE would be a suicide on this machine. Easy to configure (text files and GUI equivalents), even "focus follow mouse" done with one click. Reminds me to CDE which I used on my Suns for years.

Oh, and let me repeat: It is very fast, even on old fashioned hardware. Let me tell you this: I was born and raised in the former GDR. The absence of the things we needed was the usual status. So we managed to do the best with the things we had, not with the things we missed. So if I got a 300 MHz box for free, why should I artificially slow it down using KDE? Use the right tool for each purpose, that's what I've learned in my life. Maybe that's different from the things many (average) computer users seem to have learned.

I noticed the quotient speed = hardware / software seems to be constant since 1980. :-)

On another few machines, I set up XFCE 4 which I like very much. The file manager is okay. It's fast and easily customizable.

For my personal use (development, gaming, video editing etc.) I have WindowMaker running, my file manager is the famous Midnight Commander. So call me a stupid old fahioned idiot.

So I can recommend XFCE for new users. Just have a look on the FreeSBIE live system CD. Many former "Windows" users were impressed after having a look at it. Only problem: it's not in german... :-)

Look at the Beryl Settings Manager to see what happens if all options the power users can think of get a place in the configuration screen.

I don't know what it is exactly that Thorvalds has submitted, but it seems he wanted a setting that is quite rare. In that case, i wouldn't mind if the patches don't get accepted. But if they are, then i hope the Gnome-devs will stand firm, and not add this to a mainstream configuration settings window. Use gTweakUI.

Beryl Settings Manager is not Gnome. Nor is BSM a typical application for a Power User. And gTweakUI is absolutely no better - a true disaster.

The patches from Linus are a little bunch of useful and quite common features available everywhere - but in Gnome (and to some extent also Windows). They are not going to cripple the wonderfully nice and simple layout of Gnome applications.

The Beryl Settings Manager doesn't comply with the Gnome HIG (and that's the problem), but it is perfectly possible to have "advanced" options and still follow the Gnome HIG.

Epiphany is an example of a Gnome application which has been modified to solve some of the problems the excessive feature removal has created. It now has an equivalent of the "Advanced Options"-button in its preferences.

If Gnome should only contain the options the mythical "Average User" could understand, there would be no Administration "panel" - no GUI for starting/stopping services, no panel for Sound Options (Average Joe doesn't understand ALSA/ESD/OSS) and so on.

I did say BSM is part of Gnome, but it is an application for tweaking settings. Probably it grew out of a debug application, which made it possible to test all settings. But it *is* brought as the settings application, and if you call gTweakUI a disaster, then BSM should be the end of the world.

Anyway, i don't mind an advanced options tab or whatever. But i do mind the assumption that if anyone thinks Gnome lacks an option, the option should be added. No, the option should be considered, and maybe, if it adds generally useful functionality, it should be added.

As for the sound back-end; indeed, the average user doesn't understand it, nor should he. The problem isn't that there is no option to choose either one of these, the problem is there are more of these. While that is (very) good for the development of open source, it is not that good for the end user. So in general, i would expect the dekstop or the distro to have made a sound choice, so the end user doesn't need to know about it.
For specialist requirements, there should be specialist applications, outside the desktop environments portfolio.

I agree options shouldn't be added for the sake of adding options. Options should be added if they make it easier to use the system, no matter if it is for everybody, or mythical average users or for the power users.

In regard to the sound back-end. There is options to choose between them. That's what I pointed out. It's weird one can choose easily between sound system back-ends but cannot easily choose whether or not to have windows with wireframes or not.

It's not a problem having the option to choose between sound system back-ends. It doesn't confuse anybody, and it helps intermediate and power users (the options make the system easier to use and therefore should be kept).

Specialist requirements would be something like Gimp, OpenOffice, monodevelop, glade, Anjuta, eclipse and stuff like that. A Menu Editor and a File Action Editor are however not specialist requirements, but rather essential desktop tools.

User interfaces are not designed solely for power users. Options added for these types of users will increase code complexity and can confuse the typical user. This is why they need to be examined and only included if it helps make the system better while NOT obfuscating it for the average user.

Right. And _you_ are one of those "usability experts". Because, you see, in order to have the necessary credentials to decide who is (or isn't) a usability expert, you must be one. Otherwise, to use a popular parlance, you're simply running your mouth.

Now, just how delusional would you have to be to imagine that you running your mouth about something you have almost no clue about, somehow equals an opinion informed enough to be presented here? Really, next time you happen to be around a mirror, look in it and ask yourself, "What do I _really_ know about usability?" Don't be overly surprised if the reflection in the mirror somehow manages to say, "Nothing."

I'm majoring in computer science with an emphasis on human-computer interaction right now, and I can say with perhaps more authority than you that you have just made an idiotically misinformed comment.

Good UI design comes from listening to end users' reactions, not from shutting them up. And certainly not from simply creating an interface from your own conceptions of what's best, without bothering do do field testing or gather user feedback.

This is actually one of the biggest challenges in UI design today--that there are too many "superstar-coder" egoists claiming they know best and not listening to what the actual end users have to say. Now, I know that Linus is one of these superstar coders, but read the comments above. He is clearly speaking for a lot of people when he complains about Gnome's limitations. Whereas the Gnome devs who decided to throw out things like menu editing undoubtedly came at the problem from the elitist "we know best" perspective.

For the record, the commenter you're replying to is also idiotically misguided by the idea that "usability experts" magically have all the answers to solving interface problems, and that "normal people" have nothing to say on the matter.

SMEG was not included in GNOME prior to 2.14 because it was not stable. Not because GNOME devs are elitist. In fact, there were two or three separate projects working on a menu editor for GNOME. GNOME went with the most stable of the three. But why are we talking about the past? Today GNOME has a menu editor, so your claim that it doesn't is wrong.

Update
Crap, I just realized you weren't the person who made that claim. Apologies.

Well, thing is, many sane WM's will have the window shade up/down on a roll of the mousewheel over the titlebar such that it never needs to be configured in the first place. To me, this is an almost obvious thing to provide by default but in Metacity this cannot even be configured. I really don't think this type of thing is such an obessive geek type feature, but opinions will differ.

As I understand it Linus was just using that as an example pertaining to him. I would dismiss it, too, if not for the fact that even Windows lets you do this.... Once a feature becomes well-entrenched, it becomes expected by the people that use it, however small a minority that may be. I think Windows provides a reasonable standard of configurability, even if the means of getting at it aren't always the best. I think it's reasonable to argue that if Gnome is going to be the main system on corporate desktops everywhere it should try to attain feature parity with Windows, except with an improved, cleaner and better-organized UI. And things like mouse button configuration are low-hanging fruit. But that's just my opinion.

I'm majoring in computer science with an emphasis on human-computer interaction right now, and I can say with perhaps more authority than you that you have just made an idiotically misinformed comment.
[..]
Whereas the Gnome devs who decided to throw out things like menu editing undoubtedly came at the problem from the elitist "we know best" perspective.

Since you like strong words, I'm sure you don't mind me telling you that you just made an idiotically misinformed statement yourself.

For the record, menu editing was temporarily removed for technical reasons, nothing else. And that's exactly what's wrong with this kind of discussions. People are taking everything they don't like about GNOME and blame it on usability decisions, when in 90% of the issues this either isn't the case or at least not as black and white as some make it look to be. Most annoying is the constant confusion between customisability and functionality. Both can be argued for and against, but in completely different ways.

This is one of those topics that just aren't any fun discussing on a public forum, because the popular opinions have so much pull, that any counter-arguments are simply washed aside.

Essentially KDE and GNOME still have exactly the same goal: To create software that is simple to use yet as useful as possible. Right now both differ somewhat drastically at their approaches, but nobody is treating users like idiots or writing flawed software on purpose. Free Software usability has come an amazingly long way during the last few years (mind you, before then some people even claimed that it would be impossible for OSS to have good usability). So what if there are still some rough edges.

I get what you're saying, but "technical issues" do not excuse removing important functionality. They should have left the old technology in place until the new technology was ready instead of subjecting users to such a ridiculous situation as not being able to modify their own menus.

"I'm majoring in computer science with an emphasis on human-computer interaction right now, and I can say with perhaps more authority than you that you have just made an idiotically misinformed comment.

[ ... ]

For the record, the commenter you're replying to is also idiotically misguided by the idea that 'usability experts' magically have all the answers to solving interface problems, and that 'normal people' have nothing to say on the matter."

What in the world are you blathering about, college boy? At no point did dmlongo or I suggest that usability experts should be the only authority on solving user interface problems.

First of all, you have no idea what my background is, so you are the one who is "simply running your mouth". So by your logic, in order to know who is (or isn't) a doctor, I need to be one myself? Sure, makes a lot of sense. BTW, I did as you suggested and looked in the mirror and asked "What do I really know about usability?", and it responded "more than Snifflez".

Your comment is just ignorant and for some reason you feel the need to attack me because you do not agree with me. I never said that I am a usability expert, but I am not foolish enough to think that there is no such thing. I come from many years of user interface coding/design and I understand the need for usability guidelines and research. Additional features need to be justified as valuable to the system as a whole, not to some small subset of "power users".

"First of all, you have no idea what my background is, so you are the one who is 'simply running your mouth'. So by your logic, in order to know who is (or isn't) a doctor, I need to be one myself? Sure, makes a lot of sense."

Spare me your lame attempts at establishing a valid analogy; I can already see that this simple task is outside the scope of your mental abilities. Let's go back to my initial question: in this specific case, what gives _you_ the right to decide whether Linus is a usability expert or not? What facts and arguments have you used to arrive at such conclusion?

Now, judging from your comment about Linus, you seem to be implying that he's wrong in his criticism of GNOME's usability. Particularly, your comment seems to be making a strong indication that you don't believe that configurable left-, right- and double-clicking on a title bar is a good, _usable_ feature. Thus, are you a usability expert competent enough to have an informed opinion about that? Furthermore, if you're not a usability expert, aren't you simply, to use your own words, attacking Linus (not even directly) because you disagree with him?

"Additional features need to be justified as valuable to the system as a whole, not to some small subset of 'power users'."

Ah, finally. An attempt on your part to actually make something resembling a valid argument. So, what makes you think that Linus' patches add functionality that only power users would be interested in? How do you know that? You say that you have years of experience in UI design -- have you designed and|or coded desktop environments?

Settle down Snifflez. Stop with the crying. God forbid somebody criticize your idol Linus. We all know that he can never do anything wrong, so any criticism must be unwarranted.

Why are you ignoring my doctor analogy? The analogy is completely valid and your immature attacks on my mental abilities are really just exposing your own shortcomings. You do not need to be a UI expert in order to know if somebody has sufficient background/training to be one. Thinking otherwise is just ridiculous. Being a kernel engineer, does not count. Not to mention that he is a kernel engineer on a system that is notoriously known for it's complexity as a desktop system.

I never said that Linus's patch didn't warrant consideration. I just said that it needed to be reviewed and determined if it benefited the system as a whole. If the GNOME team determines that they do not wish to include it, then that is there choice. Linus is a representative of the Linux community and by mocking the GNOME team, he is not only being unprofessional, but extremely petty.

When I doubleclick on a titlebar it damn well better maximize/restore. Others will say it better shade/unshade. Others will say it should minimize. It is not possible to cater to all these people without some sort of option somewhere.

Having that option hardly confuses me in my day to day work, it's something I set once. Of course, since it is set only once I wouldn't object if the switch was not immediately accessible, except that then people might not know it is there and be stuck with titlebar doubleclick behaviour they loathe.

So, hidden or not is still an open question for me, but the option had better exist.

In too many cases in Gnome, the option does not exist. Order of dialog buttons: Gnome and KDE are by default opposite. In KDE, someone who prefers the Gnome way can change it. However with any Gnome applications I use, I am stuck with their way, opposite to how I prefer it.

Someone above said Konqueror has too many buttons. Well each of those buttons does something and I make use of most of them. Ones I don't, I can remove. Of course, the ability to remove them is probably seen as too much choice by some. Do people really want less functionality by default without the option to add more? I much prefer having much functionality visible by default with the ability to remove. Less functionality by default would be fine too if there was the option to add, but again new users might not know it is there at all.

I'm so glad Gnome and KDE both exist so we can choose our poison. It works fine until something like this (Linus' patches) happens ehe.

I like it because there is not so much eye candy on it as KDE has. There are buttons just were there need to be. And personaly I think the KDE Controlcenter is a katastrophy. I know no one who just found what he search after he opend it. Even I am just searching for things, because the KControl is bloated with features that sounds similar.

Therefor I like gnome, and his very easy "application" menu. I just click and have to select which type of application I want to see.

And the very good idea of 3 menus. One menu for settings, one for places and one for applications.

well, KDE's control center is quite crowded, but there is a search function in the newer versions so you can generally find what you're lookin for quickly. Gnome didn't have a central control center, you'd have to waste your time looking through menu's, starting stuff, seeing it wasn't right, closing and looking again. To finally find out you CANT change the colors. Or whatever.

Anyway, about the 3 menu's, usability tests from Novell came to the conclusion 1 menu (like KDE) is better, so they removed the 2 panels and made one panel with a Windows XP like startmenu for Gnome.

For KDE, they designed a whole new type of menu, Kickoff, really cool.

I a totally agree with Linus in practically evrything. Some people just complain but at least his criticism is bundled with a fix, not just complaints. As long as he helps instead of just complaining (as he always will), he is doing the right thing.

Gnome is tainted, by patents and a certain bad business culture. They go the evil guys involved and they introduced the bad development culture, unhackerish ideology. Linus does not like these just-no-fun persons. Just look how the Gnome guys sabotage interoperability with other desktop environments.

And I think people make too much of the fact that Gnome does not provide configuration options. I actually think this is a red herring.

When was the last time you used a windows application that asked you which multimedia engine to use. What the heck is a multimedia engine. (I know what it is of course, but why should the user care). This is not a gripe against KDE, banshee allows you to use different multimedia engines too. Is this really a useful option, or is the real problem that Gstreamer needs a bit more attention. Or do you make Xine an option. Imagine telling a former windows user that if he can't play his audio file with Banshee, he should go to the preferences page and change the multimedia engine to Xine, or Helix or NMM or Arts. He will look at you like you are mad.

That is not really useful functionality, and good riddance when the developers remove it. People should fix GStreamer if there is a problem with the multimedia performance. That is what the Gnome developers are saying. If something comes up and is working better than GStreamer, then switch to using that instead. The user shouldn't have to know what the multimedia system is?

This is kind of funny. Years ago, Metacity didn't even support changing the double-click behavior. None of the developers were interested in making it configurable; not because they were against the idea, but because the existing behavior was fine with them, and they had better thing to work on.

A bunch of whiners were bitching about how GNOME hated users and wouldn't implement features they asked for because they are "too complicated." Just to shut the morons up, I wrote the patch to allow changing the double-click behavior between maximum and shade, submitted the patch, and it was put in the code without questions asked. I'd never done a GNOME/Metacity patch before and didn't have any magic developer persuassion powers. I don't even like or use window shading, but I wanted to show that the GNOME developers have no problems accepting new features and configuration if people would just shut up and write the code instead of bitching and whining and claiming that the GNOME developers just had to add the features people wanted for nothing in return.

Now Linus went and rewrote almost all of that code. I'd say it's almost guaranteed to go in (the CC changes might or might not; maybe after they're cleaned up a bit), and it's just going to be further proof - the bitching, whining, and name-calling does nothing, but writing some actual code does everything.

No developer of any Open Source project is required to add a feature or an option just because some moronic user insults the developers and demands the feature. Unless you're paying the developers (hint: you almost certainly are not), they are in no way bound to add a feature you want and they don't. You got an entire OS, desktop, development tools, application suite, browser, server daemons, and so on for *absolutely free*. You have no right to whine, bitch, or demand anything. None.

In my experience, the worst thing about being involved in Open Source projects are the users who make demands. Not polite requests or suggestions, or even desperate pleas, but *demands*.

The second worst part are the kinds of users who find a problem with the software, and instead of reporting said problem, they request a feature or option that lets them work around that problem. Those are the requests that the GNOME developers will reject on the grounds that the option is wrong, and that's where the impression that GNOME developers hate features and configurability. One example relevant to GNOME is window snapping. Most users can really use it to help aligning windows. Many users hate the snapping behavior most WMs have, as it makes windows jump towards the nearest window when moving, and then snaps to it; it can be very irritating. So users were constantly demanding that an option be added to enable snapping.

Did Metacity add an option for it? No. Instead, one of the developers (Elijiah, iirc) worked out a new behavior that added window resistance without snapping. Every since, I've yet to see a user request snapping, and I've yet to see a user complain about the resistance being irritating. All users are satisfied, and there's no need for an option.

So, would is better: that the developers denied the request for a new option to switch between two behaviors, neither of which works ideally, or them rejecting those requests while thinking up a new behavior that pleases everyone?

Users shouldn't request options. Ever. They should not request features. Ever. They should simply state what problem they are having. Don't ask for window snapping. Don't ask for an option to make window alignment easier. Just say, "I have trouble aligning windows." Let the developers figure out if snapping is the right way to solve them, or if there's a better way. You are certainly allowed to suggest fixes. "Some WMs allow window snapping; that solves the problem for me."

As soon as you start demanding features, you either end up getting your bugs closed and rejected, or you end up convincing the developers to do something in what may be a sub-standard way.

I don't really get Linus. What good does he really think he is doing? If he doesn't like Gnome, why does he have to start complaining about it? I for example don't like Konqueror but do I whine about it somewhere? Nope. I just use what suites me. Gnome suites me just fine. I tried KDE just recently, but I ditched it because I didn't like it. But Linus thinks I should use KDE anyway, even though I liked the alternative better? No way, not gonna happen. Still, I consider myself kinda power-user, not an idiot. And I don't feel like my DE does treat me like an idiot either.

My issue with Gnome is not the simplicity of the ui, in-fact that why i use it. What i don't like is the fact that there are things missing that any modern DE would/should have. Configurability is the least of these things. Example, why can't I restore my files from the trash can to their proper place. Why don't I have a thumbnail preview in the file select dialougue, these are just two examples. There are others that just makes the Gnome devs look like they either don't care or don't know what they are doing. The fact that xfce has implemented more features than gnome is sad considering that its supposed to the "lightweight" DE. KDE has had these features for a while and is as modern as any DE should be. Gnome looks modern but is propbably the least compared to Other DE's.

there is one thing that keeps bothering me. why do so many people say that they are using gnome because they don't need to change any settings. well that are just sane defaults!!! even if you think that kde has too many options, so what look at linspire or kubuntu, those are the same nice sane defaults... so in the end it is kcontrol vs gconf, and I know which one is more usable!

but I switched from gnome to KDE for one very simple reason. KDE just seemed to be faster. But that was only on a machine I'm running VMware on. Other than that I still use gnome.

Why are so many in the Linux community hell bent on everything being difficult? Why not have wizards and gui screens that help you configure your system? Why not have simple and intuitive interfaces?

I think one of the beauties of Linux is that it is possible to have both. You can have your simple configurations and interfaces and still get your hands dirty when simple doesn't work. I'm beginning to think that some just can't stand it not being their way. And it's not just Linus either.

Linus ... war ... Gnome ... KDE ... about 100 posts in a very short time ... whiff of gunpowder and flaming ... there'd be less interest in news of an alien spaceship landing in Central Park. Just goes to show that Linux folk love a good argument, or even a bad argument if no good argument is to be had.

It's very tempting to join the argument. It would be easy to say, for example, that were there ever to be a desktop environment for hairdressers, then Gnome I mean KDE I mean Gnome I mean Xfce no no quite wrong I really mean Fluxbox darn that's wrong I meant to say xxxx would be it. But of course that would be merely provoking an unnecessary argument and I'm sure nothing could have been further from Linus Torvald's mind when he suddenly decided spring a surprise on us all by announcing these "patches". Frankly they are to patches what matches are to gunpowder.

Funny - I give computers to the poor of Anchorage - after some testing of both Gnome and KDE we went with KDE. The reasons are...

1. KDE was a bit faster on the old slow computers we have to give away.

2. When we tested KDE and Gnome on our client base they liked KDE better and seemed to learn it a little faster. Many of these people have little or no computer experience. So if these people prefer the KDE experience to Gnomes Simple Simon approach - Just what kind of idiot Gnome aimed at??

Were your client base familiar with Windows? Former Windows users tend to prefer KDE (I'm one of the exceptions, but probably because I grew up in the pre-Windows era - you know Amiga, OS/2 and Mac OS Classic

yes, that's why 60% of the linux users use KDE, and only 30 % Gnome... tough these numbers might have changed in the last year, and of course - both are totally insignificant compared to windows ;-)

Sorry, but those numbers are wild speculation at best. Since no one really knows how many Linux desktop installations there are, you can't possibly have reliable stats on what desktop environment they use.

You may be able to get stats for a very specific set of users (due to reliable stats gathering) but at the moment there are no reliable statistics for the entire Linux community.

I know, but this is a pretty common guess, and you see these numbers coming out of many polls a lot. You see them on shows, too. I think it's more realistic to say it's 60/30 than 30/60 (KDE/Gnome). But yes, it might be 10% off

Sometimes I've noticed these ex "Windows" users getting confused with the structure of KDE. They lokked for things in such weird places instead of seeing the obiousity of where the options are located.

Here in Germany, there are major complains if something is not in german language. But if it is, the complain is something like "Uh, you have to read? No, that's to complicated for me." English is still a need if you deal with computers.

KDE has helped a lot of people leaving the lock-in of "Windows". In Germany, illegal copies of the most expensive "Windows" types are around, and users don't care. But some of them already say: "I don't want to use pirated software, is there something else which is [basically] the same, but does not cost money?" Here Linux or even BSD enter the scene and show up with KDE. "Wow, it's not that bad! You don't have to write anything! I can just clickityclick!" (NB: "Writing" refers to hitting keys on the keyboard, e. g. to enter a user name, a password or a command.)

BTW, I cannot consider myself as a former "Windows" user because I managed my "IT career" on Suns, HPs and SGIs, which did not run MICROS~1 products. :-)

KDE is good for beginners, such is XFCE and even IceWM (if someone does the preconfiguration properly). GNOME is okay, too. For everyone the DE he likes. For every task the right tool.

The UI configuration levels should be targeted by their intended audience and allowed to be changed when one moves between each audience.

Example: NeXTSTEP/Openstep is by far the most consistent get out of your way and let you be productive OS still today. Keith Ohlfs understood this so well. It's a shame we never were able to steal him back from WebTV when we merged with Apple.

What he did for say, Terminal.app, was to offer differing modes of UI options.

Developer Mode offered a much greater set of capabilities that User Mode didn't.

If GNOME could target at least 3 varying modes of configureability--each one have a varying degree of setting options--that makes sense then I doubt Linus would be adding such "patches."

Gnome, KDE, doesn't matter, they are bunch very poor GUIs compared to others out there. I really wish these guys would take a hint, look at what Apple has done, and just design a decent GUI that is CONSISTENT and does not require idiotic configuring (although Gnome is closest). Someone said earlier about the fact that their is more accountants than geeks, and that is correct. Even more, some of us sometimes just do not care to spend countless hours having to tweak and manage a GUI just to make it usable. I still can not believe that after all these years, both KDE and Gnome fall so far behind all others. How long did it take Apple to make one off of BSD?

Your comment is vastly overblown. The GNOME UI is easily the equal of the OS X one, surpassing it in consistency and being eclipsed by it in aesthetics.

As for how long it took Apple to make one off BSD, you also have to factor in their 20+ years of UI design experience, as well as the fact that NeXT handed them a complete OS + UI that'd been in development since more than a decade before the GNOME project even existed. And even then it took from 1997 to 2001 to get out OS X 10.0, which was a major step backwards from OS 9 in the GUI department. It wasn't until about 2001 that the GNOME folks even started a project (the HIG-ified GNOME 2.x) to build a user-centric GUI for regular desktop users.

1) Apple didn't make one ouf of BSD.
2) Apple didn't start from scratch.
3) Your answer would be: Apple spent 20 years. And they're still not getting it right ("getting it right" is something I consider impossible).

Both KDE and Gnome are more-or-less equal to mac OS X, imho. Not in every aspect (KDE is sure more crowded and less usable, but it does have more features in several areas; Gnome is almost as usable, I'd say). And all three kick XP/Vista's ass almost anytime.

Still MS dominates the market. It's not about usability or who's better, it's about who has the best lawyers..

Linus has got it exactly right. GNOME developers have a lot of good ideas and start to implement them, and then either lose interest or find something else that needs more immediate attention or that they prefer to work on. At this point the nifty new feature partially works, for a while, and, generally, is usually broken and then not fixed for quite some time. Also as Linus noted they seem to dislike patches from outsiders.

I used to like GNOME as my desktop at one time when it was MUCH smaller than KDE, faster than KDE, and mostly worked. (OK, it still mostly works, but it's gotten bloated(rivals KDE in size), and slow.)

On faster machines, today, I tend to end up eventually using KDE even though I give GNOME a shot almost every time, and more especially now since I tend to use Ubuntu for my base installations. Over time, I have found that as mentioned above I generally dump in the KDE packages and rarely ever return to GNOME.

On slower machines, I usually end up going with xfce or something even lighter like fluxbox plus rox filer or similar setup.

People who likes KDE uses KDE and people who likes gnome uses gnome. It's that simple. They don't need Linus Torvalds to tell them what to use based on what he thinks is better. Gnome has a different goal than KDE. Why does he have to argue so much about it?

Linus, if you´re reading this: just unsubscribe from the gnome lists and do what you do best instead; kernel development. Everything isn't going to be done your way, no matter how much you want it.

The post was probably modded down because he claimed that the patches where rejected for being written by a "non-idiot" which impiles that people contributing to gnome are idiots.

Besides the patches hasn't been rejected, they're under discussion.

Well, since the person submitting the patch seems to think that only idiots use gnome - that would be about right, wouldn't it?
The action was based on the user being non-idiot and so by his own definition he is not gnomes target.

I would say I have to agree with Linus. If anyone has ever used utorrent or cosmosui mod for world of warcraft, they would know what im talking about. In both of these programs theres a drop down list with user skills, and default its on basic. If you choose pro or developer you get more options and if gnome did this everyone would be taken care of. The pros can turn on pro mode and enable the run button, and turn off spatial gnome which sucks and the regular users can stay with their win95 style navigation of folders.

Well, it is sure good that we have both KDE and GNOME (and XFCE and all the others). Just consider the amount of quarrelling and disagreements in the developer and user community if there was only one single mostrous unified desktop environment for everyone...

As to the three main desktop environments, personally I prefer GNOME or XFCE over KDE because I just prefer a clean and simple basic interface. However, I'm sure I would get my tasks done in KDE too.

I rather add extra plugins (like Nautilus scripts) to a simple basic interface in order to extend it than try to remove unnecessary bloat and bling. So in the end it has a lot to do with aesthetical and personal preferences too.

I have to admit that sometimes the GNOME philosophy is a bit too much, and I can understand why many people like Linus may feel frustrated. Even if I like simple and clean, I do want to have those options available that let me configure things differently if I want to.

Developers shouldn't think that they always know things better than the users. They don't. Developers should let users have control over things when ever possible and if there is no very strong reason to deny that choice from them.

Desktop environments could learn something from other open source software projects like X.org and Mozilla. More and more big scale software projects seem to prefer a modular approach to development. The goal is to have a good clean, relatively simple software base that is easily extensible when needed. Advanced users can extend the base as much as they want but the software base remains simple (& relatively fast and bugfree). Everybody's happy?

Ok. Seriously. I have been using both GNOME and KDE for a while and both are quite nice. I've also used things like CDE, E16, E17, WindowMaker, TWM, Fluxbox, IceWM... and so on. A few months ago I returned back to FVWM (fvwm2 to be precise). When I installed my first Linux system about ten years ago FVWM (fvwm1) was the window manager. And when I started using FVWM again I felt like I had finally returned home! Now I have very clean, nice, uncluttered, extremely lightweight desktop configuration which fits like a glove.

But, thanks to the Novell/MS deal, and Ballmer's latest antics, and the fact (well, strong evidence supporting it) that MS has already made direct threats to Linux customers, and thanks to Gnome now featuring Mono by default, it's all KDE for me (and Xfce for something faster and lighter and featuring GTK, which is still good).

But, thanks to the Novell/MS deal, and Ballmer's latest antics, and the fact (well, strong evidence supporting it) that MS has already made direct threats to Linux customers, and thanks to Gnome now featuring Mono by default, it's all KDE for me (and Xfce for something faster and lighter and featuring GTK, which is still good).

Mono is not tighly integrated in Gnome because the core of Mono and its based applications can be easily removed and replaced without affecting Gnome functionality.

I have been using Gnome as my only desktop for about 4 years, switching over from fluxbox. Overall it has been a kickass experience, it is imo a world class desktop that looks good while focusing on usability and not (jusr) eye-candy.

But when I saw the new gnome-i-fied version of the XSvreensaver settings GUI I realized that something had gone very wrong. You can change your screensaver, but the settings button is gone, the advanced tab is gone?

How on earth does that improve usability? If you are a basic user you feel robbed, if you are an advanced user you feel annoyed. I see it as a clear case of apple-envy.

I love the gnome project and it helps me greatly in my daily tasks, but please please don´t alienate the advanced users!